Ecuador's embassy in London blocks Assange's Internet access

DEBKAfile was founded by a team of journalists in June 2000 as an independent Internet Web site, providing an intelligence and security news service. October 19, 2016, 8:50 AM (IDT)

The Ecuadorean Foreign Ministry announced Tuesday that it had ordered the country's embassy in London to prevent WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up at the diplomatic facility since 2012, from accessing the Internet. The announcement said “The government of Ecuador respects the principle of nonintervention in the affairs of other countries” and “does not interfere in the electoral processes in support of any candidate in particular”, so it decided to temporarily restrict Assange's access. US State Department spokesman John Kirby denied accusations that Secretary of State John Kerry pressured Ecuador to take the step, saying “Reports that Secretary Kerry had conversations with Ecuadorian officials about this are simply untrue. Period.” Meanwhile, WikiLeaks released its 11th tranche of e-mails of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, on Tuesday. Around the time that that Assange announced via a Twitter posting that his Internet connection was being severed, there were three straight tweets from the same account with long lines of encrypted code of letters and numbers, apparently instructions for WikiLeaks to release e-mails from a different, undisclosed location.

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